


a steady presence

by PencilDragon



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F, Romance, Slow Burn, lesbian susan queen of our hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 20:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16071104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PencilDragon/pseuds/PencilDragon
Summary: Over the early years of her reign, Queen Susan of Narnia slowly falls in love with a Naiad.





	a steady presence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guardyanangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardyanangel/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Simply Smashing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7927366) by [PencilDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PencilDragon/pseuds/PencilDragon). 



It was misty, gilded dawn, and very early. Susan, still feeling more like a schoolgirl than a new-crowned Queen, wandered through the castle hallways until she found her way outdoors. There, she closed her eyes, and listened. Chirping birdsong, trees (were they Trees?) rustling in the morning breeze, and the low pulse of surf. It was not silence, but it was quiet, and peaceful in a way Susan had not had enough of lately.

She opened her eyes and tried again to make sense of the unfamiliar scenery around her. Cloud-marbled sky, ancient stone castle behind, blue water glimpsed beyond. Woodland ahead, exuberant with newfound shades of green. Mud, squelching unpleasantly between her bare toes—but after all, it seemed that many people here didn’t wear clothing. Like as not they wouldn’t mind.

In the midground, a stone-rimmed well, between Susan and the thickening Trees. Was someone leaning out of the well? It must be a Naiad. Susan tried to remember the names of the Naiads she’d met in the recent, helter-skelter days.

“Hello,” said Susan. “If we’ve met, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name. I’m Susan.”

Despite her watery, not-quite-corporeal look, the Naiad leaned on the stone like someone might lean on a garden wall, if it were someone who’d decided to lean over the garden wall wearing only a misty suggestion of clothing above the waist. “I know,” she said, turning her steady gaze toward Susan. “All Narnia knows of you, young queen.”

Her eyes were deep and dark. Susan looked away, conscious of her travel-stained skirt, of her bare grubby feet. “I don’t know how to be a queen.”

“You freed us.”

Susan glanced up. The dark eyes were still on her. “Aslan did that.”

“Not without you.”

Susan didn’t know what to say to that. Aslan was a very strange Lion. “Were you Naiads frozen for a hundred years?” she asked. “What was it like?”

“It was dark, and cold, and lonely. No summer sunbeams to warm us. No mingling with our sisters, or capering with the Fauns, or looking up at the sky.” The Naiad turned toward the sunrise again, light shining on her wet face. “Nothing but frozen stillness.” A shudder ran through her.

Susan didn’t know what to say. “May I sit and look at the sky with you?”

A smile, quick as a darting eddy. “I’d like that. My name is Unila.”

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

It was bright afternoon, sun-warmed spring still edged with cold. Susan was back in Narnia after months away. In Anvard, she’d met neighboring royalty, taken copious notes on castle-management, and studied the art of queenship, from politics to pickling. Now, she returned, head full of knowledge, hands full of new skills.

Had she known, when she rode away, that Narnia was her home? No, not until she crossed the mountains, recognized herself among Trees again, and felt her loneliness ebb. Not until she overheard Squirrels arguing, and glimpsed a Naiad just off the trail, and found herself unutterably relieved to be home.

Back at Cair Paravel, she found Unila lying on the grass, cloud-watching. Susan kicked off her shoes and sank down beside her, despite the chill in the air.

“What did you find beyond the mountains?” asked Unila.

Susan stretched, neck cracking, still stiff from the long ride. “A great many Humans, greatly preoccupied with their own tedious formality. It is good to be home.”

“I was glad when you crossed into Narnia.”

Susan turned, surprised. “You knew? How?”

“We know.” The Naiad spread her hands against the earth, droplets trickling from her fingers. “Clouds above, wells below, streams running down the mountains. The waters of Narnia dance through us, shared by all.”

Susan thought of the Naiad she’d glimpsed on the way back, chasing a Satyr pell-mell down the slope. Of course. No wonder Unila hadn’t seemed surprised to see her. “How was it, here, while I was away?” She’d been away since mid-Winter. Already it was greening Spring.

“Cold. Gloomy. But not imprisoned in ice. Small streams and lakes slept, but the great River God and his daughters ran all winter through and we were not lonely, not like the Great Winter. Now the rains are returned, and my sisters burst their banks for joy of the Springtime. Lady Verna dances in the woods.”

The ground was cold beneath Susan, but even her Human senses could faintly feel the power that thrummed through the Narnian earth, lively and glad. In Archenland, the ground was still. The trees didn’t walk. The wells didn’t talk.

“Did you learn what you wanted?” Unila asked.

“Oh yes,” said Susan. “They have so many books there.” Unfortunately, most of the books in the Anvard library offered more about the popular myths and misconceptions of Narnia than they did on the transmission of information via interconnected Narnian waterways. “Books can’t tell you everything, though.” Neither had the books explained the subtler nuances of Archen culture. “It’s different, there. At first, I liked being among Humans again.”

Briefly, it had been nice to go for a walk and be truly alone. To have a conversation without her every reaction being read by Animal noses. But Queen Ilene had rapidly quashed her solo walks, saying they were neither safe nor proper, and Susan found herself wanting to strangle the ubiquitously chatty attendants.

“Humans are dull, though,” she added, “and terribly nosy, at least in Archenland.”

“Not just in Archenland,” said Unila. “Worse, though, with so many of them together.”

“Yes! In Narnia, everyone knows my business but they’re polite enough to not say anything until I mention it. In Archenland, it’s all guesses and gossip and endless prying questions.” Susan made a disgusted face. “I missed you, Unila.”

“And I, you.”

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

It was clear summer morning: grass dry, sun not yet hot. Susan leaned on the stone of Unila’s well and waited. Closing her eyes, she waiting for her breathing to calm.

After a moment, she heard the low whispering ripple of Unila ascending, and felt a damp hand laid over her own. “My queen?”

Susan’s other hand clenched on her hip-quiver. “I would like to stab him in the thigh with one of these arrows.”

“That Archen visitor, you mean?” News had filtered through the world that Narnia, land of Beasts and Spirits, was under new management, and that the ice situation was resolved. Now a persistent trickle of visitors appeared in Narnia to see for themselves.

“Yes. Came up behind me while I was aiming and tried to adjust my stance.”

“Does he not know that you are the Bow-arm of Narnia?”

“I suppose not, or doesn’t care. He’s Lord Terence of Bowford, after all, so his archery skills clearly surpass mine as a matter of course. It wouldn’t have occurred to the learned master that I might already be familiar with the traditional Archen stance, and my use of the Narnian stance was an intentional choice, particularly suited to the Narnian bow with which I was shooting.”

Unila crossed her arms and huffed. “I hope you slapped him. Insufferable man.”

“And have him think me an indignant child? No. I let Swordmaster Ocellus advise him of the peril in which he placed himself by laying hands on Her Majesty the Queen. And Peter and Edmund were there, so they were stern and male.”

“You are Narnian, my queen, and can defend your own honor. You need not leave it to your menfolk.”

Susan sighed. Seated herself on the stones, unbuckled her arm guard, and dropped it on the grass. “Archen men don’t see it that way. Lord Terence will respect me more, for having had my honor defended by the High King.”

“And will you?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you respect yourself more or less?”

“I—” She stopped, then said slowly. “I respect myself for tailoring my response to the audience, for considering the ramifications of my actions beyond my immediate satisfaction. Why? Do you respect me less, for playing the game?”

“No. But I would not see you diminish yourself, merely for some petty foreign lord. Cair Paravel is your home. You are Narnian. You owe him nothing.”

“I suppose.” Susan fidgeted, troubled. “Our international reputation does matter, though. Eventually, won’t I need to marry one or the other of these princes and lords? It shall be useful, then, to know how to play their games.”

“Marry a foreign prince? Why should you?”

Because . . .everyone outside Narnia seemed to take it for granted that she would, speaking of strong alliances and eligible opportunities. Because even though she didn’t quite understand why the young women in Anvard talked incessantly of boys, she did understand that they thought her old enough to be thinking of marriage. Because when she was a little younger, and complained of Sir Tran’s pestering, she was only congratulated on his obvious like for her. “I—everyone seems to expect me to.”

“Narnia needs her queen far more than she needs a prince consort. I cannot believe that Aslan brought you across the worlds to become the wife of some insipid duke.” The words were quiet but vehement.

Susan glanced up, her eyes meeting Unila’s steady gaze. She could not imagine Unila—wild, unfathomable Unila—as anyone’s wife. “I don’t want to leave Narnia.”

“Then don’t.”

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

It was quiet, solitary midnight. Nocturnal Narnians went about their lives, but Humans had long since gone to bed. All but Susan, who ran up to the well and peered in. “Unila! Are you there?”

A moment later, there was a splash, and the Naiad emerged. “I thought you in bed, this far into the night. Don’t you Humans need sleep?”

“Not you, too. Mrs. Twinkletacks already scolded me in the library. Can I ask you some questions about Nymphs?”

Unila sprawled against her stones. “About Naiads, certainly, but I’m no Tree. What brought this on?”

“I was reading the Code of Swanwhite the Fair, and she wrote a whole section on the duties and limitations of the Narnian sovereign toward the Nymphs of Wood and Water. It was all about what a sovereign can and cannot ask of her people.”

“Really? What did she say?”

“That it is the duty of the Narnian sovereign to remain in regular contact with the Naiads and Dryads, wherever she may be throughout the land, and to listen to their knowledge. However, she also said that Nymphs must not be compelled into full-time service as messengers or spies, for such employment would divert their attention from their domains of Wood and Water, and would cause the whole country to suffer.”

“Quite true.”

“I know the Witch employed many Dryads as spies and messengers, but did old Narnian monarchs do the same? Why would Swanwhite write of it, unless it had happened?”

Unila spread her hands. “I am not a Badger, to remember the past. I am a water-spirit, and I live today. I can tell you of the currents of water and magic throughout the land of Narnia, but I do not know what happened in the time of Swanwhite the Fair.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, too! Sometimes you mention knowing what’s happening elsewhere. What do you know? How do you sense it?”

Even in the bright moonlight, Susan could see Unila’s smile dimpling her cheeks. “You have such hunger for knowledge, dear queen.” The Nymph swung herself up to sit on the stones, and spread her arms out at the night around them. “Water is everywhere, dissolving everything, carrying all manner of things along in her currents. The Rivers carry news of the clear sky and high mountaintops down to Beruna, and news of the wild Lantern Waste all the way to the Eastern Sea. The warm sun lifts the water from the sea into the sky to greet the Stars, and cool western breezes bring the rain down, carrying memories of both sea and sky into Narnia’s soil. From there, she trickles through the land, seeking again the sea.”

Unila slid down onto the ground, fingers tendriling into the earth. “Here, at Narnia’s easternmost tip, I taste it all. I smell the recent sunshine on the southern mountain streams, and taste the apple a Raccoon washed for his dinner a few miles east of here. North of Lantern Waste, the Dwarfs have opened a new mine, without asking the nearby Rivers if the area could sustain the runoff from the waste. There is a dry and sour flavor from up by the marshes, for it has not rained now in some time, and the Marsh-wiggles are unhappy with the good weather. Water runs through all of Narnia, dear queen, and I taste all of her.”

Susan realized she was holding her breath, listening, and let it out. Images flowed through her mind, a vast network of veins and arteries throughout her country, and Unila in her well, listening to the pulse.

Unila sat up, leaning forward. “Water flows even in you.” She reached out and laid a hand on Susan’s chest.

“Can you feel it?” whispered Susan.

“I feel the pull of the currents in you, keeping you alive.”

Susan held very still, feeling her own heartbeat in her chest, and Unila’s hand, cool and damp and sure. Then she slid down so that she could throw her arms around Unila. “You know Narnia so intimately,” she whispered. “I read all evening, looking for her in books and finding only dusty memories. That’s why I came looking for you.”

Unila laughed. “Here I am, right where I always am.”

“I knew you would be. I knew you could explain it to me. But the books showed me what questions to ask.”

“What did you read, beside Queen Swanwhite’s Code?”

Susan thought back over the evening, imagining the books spread across the library table. “We have portions of the memoirs of Swanwhite’s butler, which record the organization of her household and government. I’ve read it before, but I dug it out again tonight and it made more sense now, in the context of her Code. Then I reread part of the _Observations on Narnian Society,_ which is by a pre-Winter Archen scholar. King Lune gave it to me several years ago, and it’s enlightening in many ways, but it’s a foreigner’s explanation of Narnia and tonight it frustrated me to no end.”

“You find so much in your books, my queen. I love how thirstily you drink in knowledge.” Unila smiled again, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “But reading can’t replace _knowing.”_

 _“_ That’s why I came to see you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

It was sweltering evening, it was dull noon, it was chill and starlit night. Every two or three months, another suitor came to call, with the usual comments about Cair Paravel’s “charmingly rustic surroundings,” and how refreshing it was to see a _young_ Queen on Narnia’s throne. Each was tedious in his own way, whether patronizing or sickly-sweet. Each said things that jarred Susan with their wrongness.

“Your gaze is unnerving, you know,” said one, when the conversation lulled. She’d thought it a quiet, almost-romantic moment of looking into each other’s eyes. His awkward jab spoiled it, and she looked away.

He was not the first man, nor the last, to tell her that she was too intense. Particularly memorable was the Calormene who nattered on for a full quarter-hour about postal systems, only to wave dismissively and say, “But you, my lovely queen, know nothing of that.”

“Why not?”

“Since you are from a country with no advanced communication networks, I am sure it bores you to hear me discuss such things.”

Susan frowned. “I am very interested in avenues of communication, and we have several extensive such networks here. For example, our Narnian waterways carry information from one end of the country to the other quite rapidly.”

He was not nearly as interested in her account of Nymph communications, as she had been in his information about the Calormene mails.

Another said, “I’m bewitched by your beauty—have you put a spell on me, dark-haired Narnian queen?” and was oblivious to her horror. He hadn’t seen the rows of statues in the Witch’s House, or the empty eyes of revived Narnians pulled from a century of suspended animation. He hadn’t seen his little brother nearly sacrificed to dark witchcraft. He hadn’t felt hunger’s fist clench his stomach, in the first year, when the whole country was bewildered and without infrastructure. He hadn’t plowed thawed fields, or soothed a traumatized country on the eve of the first snow, that first winter after the Winter.

“I would never do that!” she shot back. That he could look at her, at her fair skin and long, dark hair, and think _witch,_ made bile rise in her throat.

He laughed. “Calm down, little queen. I was only joking!”

Susan dug her nails into her palms, hard. Coldly, she said, “In Narnia, witchcraft is no laughing matter. We consider it a topic thoroughly inappropriate to polite conversation.”

It was an uncomfortable evening.

There were many such dull evenings with this or that visitor. But afterwards, there was always Unila to tell about it. They would laugh together, at the silly or horrifying things that he’d said. Then they would laugh at each other. Eventually, Susan realized that she laughed harder with Unila than with anyone else.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

It was crisp afternoon, sun-warm and breeze-cool. It was a day of rest, free from work, and they lay sprawled in the grass, luxuriating in unhurried time. The latest suitor had been seen on his way, and there were no crises demanding Susan’s attention. Nothing more urgent than the fluffy clouds overhead, and the low humming of the Well-Woman who lay nearby, braiding clover blossoms into a chain.

Susan laid her head on her arms and stared at Unila, sleepy with afternoon sun. She admired Unila’s total focus on whatever occupied her at any moment, and she liked watching her blue-tinged hands as they twined the clover stems around each other. A deep, overwhelming happiness welled up in her, and she said, “You are so beautiful, Unila.”

The Naiad looked up, hands stilling. “I am just myself.”

“I know. I like you a lot.”

“You are lovely. I know everyone tells you that, but I think it’s true.”

Susan smiled. “I like hearing it, from you. It feels different.”

“How so?”

Susan shrugged, a half-hearted movement without changing position. “I know you. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to get something out of me.”

A companionable silence followed that, in which neither of them felt the need to say anything. Unila continued braiding her clover chain, and Susan watched her from under heavy-lidded eyes. Her thoughts drifted: to yesterday’s suitor, who’d kissed her without leave. To tomorrow’s meetings—no, she would think about those tomorrow. To how very appealing Unila’s hands were, smooth and precise and gentle.

“What is it like to have a lover?” she asked, hating how childish the question sounded.

Unila looked up again. “Passionate. Fulfilling. For Nymphs, it is a mingling of spirits as well as bodies. We drink deeply of each other, and so become closer. With the Fauns and Satyrs, it is something different, tangier and wilder, but satisfying in a different way. Do you think you want Prince Curtis to be your lover?”

“What? No.” Susan shuddered. “He kissed me without so much as a by-your-leave, and I didn’t like it.”

“You deserve better, dear Susan.”

She didn’t particularly want to kiss any of the princes and lordlings who’d offered, not even the ones who inspired the most lovesick sighs from the young women of Anvard. Even they left her uninspired.

“A good lover always asks before kissing,” Unila was saying. “Who would want to kiss someone, without knowing they wanted to kiss you in return?”

“Narnians are so sensible about these things,” said Susan. “What else do good lovers do?” Her heart was pounding, but she didn’t know why.

“They focus on the one they are with. They think of their lovers’ pleasure before their own. They are careful not to lie.” Unila looked up, thoughtfully. “They thank each other for what they have shared.”

Susan looked at the curve of Unila’s lips, their shape so familiar and yet, had she ever looked this closely? How would they feel, if she reached out and touched them? How would they feel against her own, if she were to kiss them? Susan looked back at Unila’s eyes—those dark, steady eyes, always looking back at her.

Wordlessly, Unila offered a hand. Susan laid her own in it. Unila’s hand was slick and firm. Susan caught her breath. They had touched hundreds of times, had run laughing through the forest, had tickled each other, had snuck up behind Lucy or Edmund or Peter to splash them. Why, now, did her heart beat so fast? Why, now, could she hardly breathe?

“Your eyes are so deep,” Susan whispered, gazing back. “I could look into them for hours and not get tired.”

Unila’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “You look all the way into me. I like how bold and confident you are.”

“I don’t feel confident, usually!”

“Perhaps not. But you think hard about what you want, and then you set about getting it.”

Susan glanced away, momentarily shy, but couldn’t keep from looking back. “You are yourself all the time. I admire that, Unila. You don’t apologize or adjust for anyone.”

“I don’t know how to be anyone else.”

Susan looked down, at their clasped hands, the one warm and pink, the other cool and blue-veined. She’d held Unila’s hand before, but never had she wondered how Unila’s skin might taste in her mouth. A hundred thoughts flitted through Susan’s mind, inarticulate, nonverbal. “Usually I plan what I’m going to say,” she blurted. “I think about the person I’m talking to and what country they’re from or what kind of Animal they are, I think about what is safe to say and what might cause an international offense. But with you, I don’t have to do that. I can just say what I’m thinking.”

“What are you thinking now, Susan?”

Susan stared at their interlocked fingers for a long, agonizing moment. Could she say it? After all that rubbish about just saying what she was thinking? Then she looked up, eyes locking with Unila’s, and whispered, “I’m thinking that I’d like to kiss you. Is that all right?”

“I wish you would.”

Susan leaned forward, but Unila was too far away to reach. Impatient, she sat up and shifted closer, daring to cup Unila’s face in her hands and marveling at how good it felt to do so. At last she leaned in, oh-so-tentatively, and pressed her lips to Unila’s.

It was nothing like Prince Curtis’s slimy, sour kiss from last night—this was cool, and soft, and sweet. Susan gasped, and kissed Unila again, more firmly this time. Her lips parted, and she tasted Unila: sweet, fresh, with a tickle of magic, like Narnia and home and summer sun.

Unila gripped her shoulders and kissed her back, nipping at Susan’s lower lip in a way that sent shivers all the way down to the base of her spine. Susan shuddered, and Unila released her. “How was that, my queen?”

Susan’s eyes blinked open. For a moment, she could not speak. She stared at Unila, overcome with emotion. Was this what the girls of Anvard meant, when they giggled over visiting lords? Could they be talking about this upsurge of feeling, strong enough to knock one over and steal the breath from one’s chest?

“Susan? Are you all right?”

She nodded, vigorously. “Better than ever. Kiss me again, Unila. Please.”

“Certainly.” 

It was warm summer evening. By a castle on the Eastern Sea, a woman and a water-nymph sat very close together on the edge of a well, looking up at sunset-gilded clouds. They spoke little, for there was nothing that needed to be said, but their arms were around each other, and they were very happy


End file.
